Networking Event-Howl at the Moon

Making Professional Business Connections in Boston MA

Monday July 28th, 2014 @Howl at the Moon 5:30pm-8:30pm

Mass Professional Networking and UR Business Network would like to invite you to our Summer Business Networking Event at Howl At The Moon in the Financial District in Boston. Please join us from 5:30pm-8:30pm on Monday, July 28th.

UR Business Network launched their internet radio stream in mid-November 2012. UR Business Network is the brainchild of 20 year multimedia marketing veteran Sergio Garcia and serial entrepreneur Rick Brutti. Internet radio had already proven to be a growing industry and their combined entrepreneurial expertise has made them uniquely suited to build an online radio station streaming 24/7 with business specific programming.

Come and bring your friends, a smile, and lots of business cards and make some great connections.

There will be complementary appetizers and a cash bar!

Click Here to Register Thank you to Howl at the Moon for hosting the event!

Where Better Than The Seaport Hotel !

All of us here at Media Crush attended this event last year and it was truly one of the best ” Tastes Of”  we have been to and we have been to a LOT of them!  The SBNDC puts a lot of work into this event and with such a great line-up this year may outdo last years!  Go with an appetite – and a thirst!

The South Boston Neighborhood Development Corporation (South Boston NDC) will hold its 11th Annual Taste of South Boston on Sunday, March 24, 2013, from 6 – 9 p.m. at the Seaport Hotel. This event has become one of the city’s premier food events enjoyed by over 500 attendees. For an entrance fee of $50, attendees can sample food and beverage offerings from 30 local restaurants while enjoying live music.

Taste of South Boston 2013

This year’s event boasts the largest number of participating restaurants, from the traditional South Boston neighborhood, the South Boston Waterfront and the Fort Point areas. As of press date, 28 local restaurants have committed to providing tastings including: 75 on Liberty Wharf, American Provisions, Aura Restaurant, Café Porto Bello, Cranberry Café, Empire, Franklin Southie, Jerry Remy’s Seaport, Larry J’s BBQ Cafe, Lincoln, Local 149, LTK, Lucky’s Lounge, Papagayo, The Paramount, Rosa Mexicano, Salsa’s, Salvatore’s, Sportello, Strega Waterfront, Sweet Tooth Boston, Tamo Lounge, Temazcal Cantina, Trade, Water Cafe at the ICA, and The Whiskey Priest. Al’s Liquors will be sampling select wines, and Harpoon Brewery will be pouring samples of their latest brews.

South Boston NDC is a recognized 501c(3) that has successfully developed over 180 units of affordable housing in the community. The Taste of South Boston is South Boston NDC’s annual fundraiser. Proceeds from this event support the South Boston NDC’s mission to provide affordable housing for working people, families, elderly and Veterans in our community. This spring, South Boston NDC and its partner Caritas Communities, will begin construction of Patriot Homes, 24 affordable apartments for Veterans.

Tickets can be purchased online at: www.tasteofsouthboston.com or at the office of South Boston Neighborhood Development Corporation located at 365 West Broadway, South Boston. For general inquiries, email us at: info@tasteofsouthboston.com or call 617-268-9610.

Tavern Road Opens in Fort Point!

For those who are just jumping on the Chef Louis DiBiccari fan-wagon we welcome you!

Tavern Road Restaurant – Fort Point Boston

The opening of the Chef’s first restaurant has been a long time coming  - Congratulations!  It is no accident that The brothers DiBiccari opened in this location - obsessed with innovation in both the hospitality and food sides of the house – what better fit than the Innovation District ?  Next month the adjacent TR Street food, the fast-casual takeout version of Tavern Road opens as well.

Photo sourced from Eater.com – Click the Photo!

Ahhh Chef Louis Night was always a great time!

From the Chef Louis Night site: 

Chef Louie Night is an interactive dining experience hosted by Boston-based Chef Louis DiBiccari. Guests vote on themes and ingredients that are not revealed to Chef Louie and his crew until the morning of each event. It’s up to the team to scurry about like deranged zoo animals and create a multi course meal in the span of just a few hours. It’s all very Iron Chef meets underground supper club, and the next one is right around the corner.

More information on Chef Louis Night can be found here.

Find Chef Louis on Facebook here -

Tweet Chef Louis   @Louis_diBaccari

Learn about the source of the name Tavern Road and more in the curated and aggregated posts below.

Article Courtesy of: ZAGAT

Tavern Road, the New American from brothers Louis & Michael DiBiccari, quietly opened late last week in the Seaport District’s Fort Point Channel neighborhood.

The 110-seater captures the playful and creative efforts of the brothers who leaned on their Uncle Adio DiBiccari, an American master sculptor, for inspiration.

(The name comes from Tavern Road, the street where their uncle had his studio near the Museum of Fine Arts in 1952.)

The menu focuses on small plates meant for sharing and features Louis’ signature style of using locally sourced New England ingredients in a creative fashion.

Tavern Road Restaurant – 343 Congress St – Fort Point Boston

Small plates include salumi, charcuterie and oysters, while striped bass, cobia, rabbit and capon figure into entree portions.

Each week Tavern Road will feature “Today’s Animal” – a locally-raised whole animal whose parts will make up specialty entrees and appetizers.

As for decor, there’s an open kitchen, an expansive bar headed by Ryan McGrale, formerly of No. 9 Park, and a 30-foot st. art-style mural done by local artists, which is an interpretation of their uncle’s works.

Tavern Road – Sourced from Eater – Click Photo

“Fort Point Channel has been a hotbed for artists for decades,” Louis DiBiccari told Zagat in an earlier interview.

“I’m all about the idea of innovation and the way this area is going, but this is Boston, and you can never forget your roots.”

Tavern Road Restaurant Fort Point Channel Boston MA

Manufacturing can thrive but struggles for respect

Cameras capture how Tracy Collins (top) uses a razor while she shaves at Gillette’s lab in England, where researchers can also rapidly make prototypes of new razors. The lab is top secret, and visitors must hand over cellphones and cameras. (Photo by Gillette)

By Scott Malone | Article Courtesy:  REUTERS

BOSTON (Reuters) – On a quiet stretch of the waterfront here, about a mile from Boston’s main tourist sites, a Gillette factory hums along 24 hours a day making an unlikely commodity: top-of-the-line razors.

The factory, which employs about 700 people in manufacturing as well as another 800 in design, engineering and management, is an anomaly in modern America – a manufacturing site in one of most expensive cities in the country.

But to Gillette’s parent company, Procter & Gamble, Boston is an ideal base not only for making Fusion and Mach 3 razors, but to produce machines that assemble Gillette products around the world: After a century of making razors at the site, the company has a critical mass of experienced workers.

“The guys in my world see the new products three to five years before anyone else,” said Ronald Calder, who runs the machine shop at the South Boston facility, which develops the equipment that produces many thousands of razors per day.

Having his crew of machine makers a short walk from the people who manufacture the razors allows them to develop and fine-tune machines quickly and cheaply.

That plays to what P&G management regards as its strength.

“Oftentimes, the basis for our competitive advantage in a category is the process or manufacturing operation that allows us to make better quality than our competitors at a lower cost,” said Bruce Brown, chief technology officer with the Cincinnati-based company.

America’s debate over manufacturing has escalated in the face of stubbornly high unemployment and the realization that younger workers lack some of the basic skills necessary to hold down a job in an assembly plant or a fabrication shop.

Gillette is facing that issue in part by putting interested factory workers through a technical training program at a nearby state university.

One graduate of that program is Mike DiBella, 31, who started at the factory five years ago with a high school diploma and some vocational school experience. After the additional program, today he manages 14 machines that sharpen steel for blades.

DiBella said he is never bored, enjoys the challenges of the job, and sees opportunities for growth.

AGAINST THE GRAIN

P&G runs against the grain in corporate America in believing that the company’s manufacturing skill is a large part of the reason shoppers are willing to pay about $3.50 for a single Fusion razor cartridge.

The company argues that manufacturing in-house and in Boston helps it to meet exacting standards for its razors, necessary since men would be less willing to pay premium prices if they cut themselves during their morning shaves.

It is not just basic items like clothing and furniture that have migrated to offshore production. More complicated, and higher-tech products such as Apple Inc’s iPads and Nike Inc running shoes are largely made overseas, often in subcontracted factories not owned by the brands whose products they are making.

Cheaper labor costs have been the main drivers of such production in China and elsewhere but with Chinese wage costs rising sharply, the yuan currency gaining against the U.S. dollar, and transport costs increasing, the advantage against the U.S. has narrowed a bit in recent years.

Also the main downside of moving production to an outside contractor in a country like China is the danger of losing some control over quality and over intellectual property.

Still, American manufacturing is now considered to be primarily the domain of makers of bigger-ticket, highly engineered products such as medical imaging devices and excavators, including General Electric Co, United Technologies Corp and Caterpillar Inc.

And it’s not as if P&G hasn’t weighed the options for the Boston site.

When the company bought Gillette in 2005, it considered closing the 45-acre (18 hectare) facility. After deciding to keep it open, it then pulled the company’s white-collar staff out of the city’s iconic Prudential Tower and consolidated Boston operations onto the factory campus.

Keeping both its manufacturing and the design of its machinery in-house makes it harder for rivals to knock off its designs, the company reasons.

Mike Chaney, Gillette’s vice president of product supply, cites the line of Sensor razors, introduced in 1990 and no longer protected by patents, as an example. “Anyone could copy it, but they don’t because they don’t know how to make it efficiently,” said Chaney.

The company has good reason to be protective of its razor business, as it is one of P&G’s most profitable ventures. The company’s grooming division – which includes men’s razors, as well as other products including men’s deodorant but not women’s razors – notched a 20 percent profit margin in the fiscal year ended June 30, well above the company’s five other divisions, which make products ranging from Crest toothpaste to Pampers diapers.

CUT TOO DEEP

Gillette – Fort Point Channel Boston

While a weak global economy and rising costs in emerging markets have led more companies to think like Proctor & Gamble, manufacturing experts say many executives have long looked at manufacturing operations too narrowly, focusing mainly on cost.

Quick reductions to the cost of making a product, whether by moving production to a lower-cost region or handing it off entirely to another company, can provide a quick boost to profit margins but make it vulnerable to quality problems or theft of technology and designs.

“They call it a cost center. It costs money rather than adds revenue,” said Jung-Hoon Chun, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity. “Because it’s a cost center, if you become a manager of the unit, if you get rid of that then from day one you get rid of costs.”

That attitude has contributed to a slow decline in U.S. manufacturing employment. The sector currently employs about 12 million people in the United States, down from a peak of near 20 million around 1980.

While many companies have reduced headcount due to productivity initiatives, cutting manufacturing too deeply can take its toll.

The world’s largest cereal maker, Kellogg Co, for instance, in November cut its profit forecast for the year, saying that it had cut too many jobs at its factories and would need to boost spending to fix problems related to food safety. U.S. regulators in June found listeria at one of the company’s plants in Georgia that produces Keebler and Famous Amos cookies, and in 2010 Kellogg had to recall millions of boxes of cereal due to an unusual smell.

“We did cut too many people in our facilities in the U.S. network,” acknowledged Chief Executive John Bryant in a conference call with investors.

On a similar note, an executive from Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company, has concluded that trying to manufacture equipment far from its main centers in the United States and France was not the right move.

“Some of our manufacturing has been seen as something that’s easily commoditized and exported to the low end,” said David Rowatt, Schlumberger’s research director for mechanical and materials science, at a recent MIT conference. “We have had in place an approach of being able to design in one place and produce anywhere in the world and what we have seen internally is that is a model that has not worked for us.”

Schlumberger officials did not respond to request for comment on the specific problems it faced.

For the complete REUTERS article LINK:  Manufacturing can thrive but struggles for respect

Chef Mario Batali baking up Seaport pizzeria plan

Article Courtesy:  Boston Herald

Fort Point’s restaurant scene is getting hotter, this time with news that a certain flame-haired celebrity chef is in talks to open a Summer Street restaurant.

Chef Mario Batali Opening Babbo Pizzeria @ 320 Summer Street Fort Point Channel Boston

LARGER THAN LIFE:

Celebrity chef Mario Batali is eyeing 320 Summer St. in Fort Point for the third location of his Otto Enoteca Pizzeria.

It would be on the ground floor of the new headquarters of LogMeIn.

Mario Batali is in negotiations to open a pizzeria at 320 Summer St., a source involved in the deal said.

Batali tweeted on Saturday that he would be opening a Babbo pizzeria in Boston “very soon,” but the source close to the negotiations said the restaurant would be a third location for his Otto Enoteca Pizzeria.

No agreement has been signed, the source said.

“They wanted Boston, they wanted the Seaport,” said the source, who wished to go unnamed because talks are supposed to be confidential. “It would be a great use for the building and great for the Seaport.”

Batali is negotiating for 6,500 square feet at 320 Summer St., a former warehouse building to which Woburn software firm LogMeIn will relocate its headquarters next year.

A competing Portland, Maine, company already operates pizzerias in Brookline and Cambridge under the Otto brand, which could account for the name discrepancies for Batali’s plans.

A spokeswoman for the chef said an official statement would be released in the next two weeks.

Chef Mario Batali Moves to 320 Summer Street Fort Point Boston

A cookbook author and co-host of ABC’s “The Chew” daytime talk show, Batali has 20-plus restaurants with business partner Joe Bastianich, including the flagship Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca in New York and Otto Enoteca Pizzerias in New York and Las Vegas, which sell pizzas for $7 to $15.

Batali would be added to a roster of big-name Fort Point chefs who include Barbara Lynch (Drink, Sportello, Menton), Joanne Chang (Flour) and Ming Tsai, who’s slated to open the 70-seat Blue Dragon at 324 A St., by year’s end.

Former nightlife-king-turned-restaurateur Seth Greenberg plans to open a French bistro at 49 Melcher St. next year, but said it was too early to reveal the chef.

Also, Berkeley Investments reportedly will bring in a celebrity chef for a restaurant at 381 Congress St.

Design Furniture for Boston’s Fort Point Channel

Article Courtesy of:  Europaconcorsi

Deadline November 11, 2012

Design Furniture for Boston’s Fort Point Channel

Design Furniture for Boston’s Fort Point Channel Design brings communities together.

Street Seats – Design Museum Boston

Public seating sets the scene for chance encounters, people watching, connecting with nature, or just taking a break.

Design Museum Boston invites individuals and groups from around the world to design an iconic bench or ‘street seat’ for the Fort Point Channel in South Boston’s up and coming Innovation District.

The Street Seats Design Challenge provides you with an opportunity to improve the livability of a burgeoning urban area while being socially and environmentally conscious. Boston’s Fort Point Channel area is a lively community and destination — in 2011 the area welcomed about 1,300 businesses, 33,000 workers, and 1,900 residents — and it’s continuously expanding.

Be inspired by the rich history of the Fort Point community and the possibilities of Boston’s Innovation District to create public seating made from sustainable materials and processes.

Street Seats is a design challenge which will culminate in an outdoor design exhibition and walking tour around the Channel, on view from April to October 2013. Entrants will participate by designing sustainable outdoor sidewalk furniture with a focus on reuse, using environmentally-friendly materials, and innovative construction methods. Design teams will record and submit their process along with their final designs to, in the end, create the outdoor public design exhibition.

Street Seats is supported by the City of Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino — in July Design Museum Boston received a $20,000 grant, part of the Pilot Fort Point Watersheet Activation Grant Program administered by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

All Entries:

All entries will be on view at the exhibition at Design Museum Boston’s Design Innovation Gallery at Factory 63 in Fort Point and featured on the Design Museum Boston website.

Design credits will include name, professional or academic affiliation (if any), city, state, country, twitter handle and website (if any). The gallery will be curated by Design Museum Boston. Semi-Finalists: The Semi-Finalists will be selected by the Jury from the entries and announced at the gallery opening at Factory 63. All Semi-Finalist will receive promotion from Design Museum Boston as well as media coverage. Semi-Finalists will receive a US$750 reimbursement grant for use in fabricating their full-scale bench. All Semi- Finalists will be installed along the Fort Point Channel as part of the public design exhibition, on view for seven months. Finalists: Three finalists will receive trophies, promotion and media coverage, as well as cash prizes. Grand prize (1 entry): US$5000 cash prize. Runners-up (2 entries) will each receive a US$2000 cash prize.

Eligibility:

The Street Seats Design Challenge is open to both local and international individuals and teams. Individuals, teams, professionals, and students are encouraged to contribute their designs.

Multiple submissions from any one individual or team are permitted, although each entry must be submitted under a unique registration number.

Employees of Design Museum Boston and their immediate family members are ineligible to take part in the Street Seats Design Challenge.

Immediate family members and employees of Jurors are also ineligible.